divine
by dedletrbox
Summary: pure therapy angst [complete]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: this was started for the Has Been songfic challenge: then it turned out that Dar Williams is not a Has Been (she just released a new album) although I guess _Sports Night _ probably would qualify. Anyway, all standard disclaimers apply: I don't own and don't profit; only the writing is mine.

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I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believingAnd the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving  
And she says, "Oh," I say, "What?" She says "Exactly"  
I say, "What, you think I'm angry, does that mean you think I'm angry?"  
She says, "Look, you come here every week with jigsaw pieces of your past  
It's all on little soundbites, and voices out of photographs  
And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map  
So tell me, where does the arrow point to? Who invented roses?"

Dar Williams: "what do you hear in these sounds?"

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Abby Jacobs reached for her next file and read the name: Rydell, Daniel W. She'd forgotten it was Danny's day. Trying to focus exclusively on the client in front of her meant that, she often ended a consultation and had no idea who was next on the schedule. Occasionally, someone completely unexpected would just show up on her doorstep. Still, she couldn't quite bring herself to hire an appointment secretary; it seemed like one more hurdle for people who already had overcome a lot just to get to her door. Besides, keeping her own calendar helped her keep up with her clients' schedules. Dan, for instance, had swapped his usual 11:00 AM for late afternoons because he'd taken up rowing in the mornings. Rowing, of all things! She just couldn't quite picture it, but she knew she should be grateful. Morning rowing and half a day's work burned off enough energy that Dan was actually sitting down again during their sessions. Also, he was fidgeting less. A little less, anyway.

The rowing had started three weeks ago, when Dan had read a flyer outside the office of his sometimes-girlfriend, Rebecca. They'd only had two appointments since then because Abby had been out of town for a conference. That meant Danny should be right on schedule to talk about rowing today; it usually took about that long for him to put words to his feelings. Not that he was bad with words. No, this guy was a writer and it showed. More a case of being bad with feelings, she supposed. After all, he was just now grasping the fact that not everyone had to shove a heavy, swaddling shroud of guilt and worthlessness off his chest just to get up in the morning. "You mean, other people don't…? How I feel—this is not _normal,_ is it?" he'd asked, realizing it for the first time at the end of particularly rough session. And what could she say? It was normal for Danny; it had been his normal for a good long time.

Abby flipped through the file, thinking that Dan was a little like a mutt who had spent his life walking on his hind legs and jumping through hoops, trying to earn his owners' affection. Then the circus pulled into town and promised to make him a star if he agreed to stay a freak. The funny, charming persona that had begun as a defensive technique was suddenly a hot commodity. Thanks to TV, everyone loved him. But only as long as he was funny and charming. Did that mean, too, that he would have to stay on the defensive forever?

Dan Rydell was not her most challenging—difficult? messed up?—client. He loved his job and his friends loved him, which was more than many people could say. (Sometimes, listening to Dan, Abby wondered if she was maybe a little thin in the friends department, herself.) Nevertheless, she thought about him a lot. Because he _was_ funny and charming, but mostly because she couldn't decide which option she would take, if the choice were hers. Wait for those who'd ignored you to love you for real, or sign on with the circus and barter quality for quantity?

"Penny for your thoughts? I think that's the going price."

She looked up from the file and, yup, there was Dan Rydell. Large as life and real as television, whatever that meant. He looked a little rough but, then, she wasn't yet used to seeing him so late in the day. She returned his smile. "Given what I've paid in tuition over the years, I'm going to have to hold out for a better offer."

He shrugged off his jacket and tossed her a sandwich from that place across the street from his building: "They don't usually do take-out, but I told Jack that my mental health was at stake, here. Roast beef on rye. Hold the mayo, hold the mustard, hold the lettuce, so really, why even bother?" He sighed to the ceiling, "It's a sad life with no mustard."

This had become their ritual over the past few weeks: since he was busy in the mornings, he came during his lunch hour instead. Of course, that meant 5:30 in the afternoon, so he was often her last patient. Realizing that his lunchtime was essentially her dinnertime, he'd started bringing her something to eat from whatever take-out place caught his eye on his trip across town. Somehow he even managed to remember that she liked her sandwiches dry.

"You really don't have to bribe me with food," she joked the first time he did this, "I'd listen to you anyway!"

"Damn right I don't have to bribe you; with your hourly rates, you should throw in a free continental breakfast for _me_," he'd grumbled, "But you work a long day; what if you get faint from hunger just as I'm having a revelation?"

"I promise I can hold out for an hour," she said seriously, holding up her hands. "Besides, revelations are for rabbis and other religious professionals. I'm just the shrink."

"I'm going to contemplate the meaning of 'religious professional' in just a second but, see, here's the rub," he explained animatedly, "We don't want _me _getting faint from hunger in the middle of the score report tonight and if you don't eat, I can't eat…it wouldn't be polite, my mother would die of shame." He paused, looked at her wide-eyed, "Do you _want_ to kill my mother? Wait—do I want to kill my mother? Could there be something Oedipal about my bringing you marsala tikki from India Palace? Only it was Elektra who killed her mother, and what's the adjective form of that? Elektral? We should discuss this, Doctor. At great length. Where's that extra fork?"

Abby had eaten, afraid that otherwise she'd get a fifty-minute hour of Charming Danny and nothing of substance. They'd washed it down with tea from her office machine. For dessert, he had picked out most of the butterscotch from her candy dish: "Kim and Chris love butterscotch." It had actually been one of Dan's better sessions. She'd begun to realize just how utterly exhausting it was to be delightful all the time: no wonder he was looking a little ragged at the edges, the circus was a hell of a lot of work.

At first, Abby worried that Dan would try and turn these dinners into dates, which would, of course, be totally inappropriate and require her to have a conversation she really didn't want to have. But when he showed up the next week bearing enchiladas, she began to see it was just his way of making everything a little less…clinical. He wasn't ashamed of needing therapy, which was remarkable, considering the macho milieu of sports broadcasting. Where someone else would have just called in a favor, Dan probably had explained his situation at great length to that bartender, Jack. In fact, Jack no doubt knew more than he'd ever wanted to know: Dan believed in full disclosure. But he still worried about the trappings, about couches and hypnotism and antidepressants; he worried about being crazy. This was just the 'dinner with friends' phase, a sequel to the 'only dropping by for a minute' phase that had him standing in the doorway for a full hour a few months back.

If it started to detract from their sessions, Abby would put a stop to it and they'd go back to the old question-and-answer format. But sessions with Danny were never ordinary and for now, she couldn't see much harm in it: the food was good, and it got Dan Rydell through her door so…

"Hey," Abby said, "whatever works."

Dan just shook his head sadly, "Yeah, I guess—but come on, no mayo?"


	2. purgatorio

"So," Dan asked when he had unwrapped his own sandwich, "how was the conference?"

Abby rolled her eyes, "Skull-numbing and tedious, as they usually are. How's the rowing?"

"Fine."

She went over to pour the tea. After a minute he started up again, talking about how they'd switched people around within the boat and solved some balance thing. That first abrupt answer tipped her off, though. This was going to be one of those days.

It wasn't that Dan withheld information the way some of her patients did, trying to seem less troubled than she knew they were. Things were just such a weird mesh inside him that he honestly didn't know what was relevant and what was not. He was amazed that she would get worked up about things that he'd never considered strange, like his obsessive need to be liked by people he would never meet. On the other hand, Dan could become completely unglued over events whose significance Abby could never grasp: he'd come to her office totally manic and very nearly in tears over the inability to pronounce the name 'Yevgeny Kafelnikov.'

Abby had to guess a lot with Danny, probing where she thought there might be something more. Sometimes they were both surprised at what came to light: _where did that come from?_ he'd ask, shocked at whatever he'd just said, _what in the world made me say _that_, Abby?_ To be fair, Dan never tried to make the job more difficult than it had to be. He'd answered every question she'd ever asked him and, Abby knew, she'd asked some doozies. And she didn't plan to stop any time soon.

"What does Rebecca think about this rowing thing?" Abby asked suddenly.

As expected, the shift in conversation left Dan stranded only for a second.

"I don't know; I haven't seen her. I haven't, you know, been looking for her. She probably doesn't know anything about it. I mean, I wouldn't know about it except for that I saw the flyer on her floor. And since I took that flyer—I think Dana has it now, or maybe Jeremy—how would Rebecca learn about it?"

"So she doesn't come up to your floor anymore, she couldn't have seen it there?"

"No, not so much any more. I mean, she doesn't really have a reason to be up there."

"But you go to her floor? That's where you first saw the notice about this race?"

"Yeah, well, her floor is beneath…I don't _go_ there so much as I _pass_ there. On my way to up to our floor.

"Hmmm…got it." Abby let the silence settle. Danny hated silence, saw it as something to be broken as soon as possible, preferably with a joke. In a minute he would start protesting. Abby took another bite of roast beef, counting the seconds in her head. Damned if the man didn't know the best carry-out places for every kind of food. _Three…two…_

"It's not about Rebecca, you know, Abby."

There we go!

"No?"

"No. I told her I was ok with her trying to work on her marriage, and I am. I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't meant it. I mean, she knows I don't like Steve Sisco but, hey, Casey knew I didn't like Lisa for years before they finally got divorced. It's not like I expected my opinion to be a deciding factor."

"So why did you offer it?"

"What, my opinion?" Dan rolled his eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but Abby noticed it still took him a minute to answer, "I don't lie to my friends," he said finally.

"Well, that's admirable, I'm sure, but if you don't expect your opinion to make a difference, why not just let the status quo reign? Why is it so important that Casey know you don't like Lisa…doesn't that just make things more difficult between you all?"

"What, you want me to lie so that they'll be more comfortable with me? Haven't we gone about twelve rounds on how I shouldn't care if people like me?" Dan chewed the last piece of his sandwich belligerently.

He saw no contradiction, so Abby spelled it out for him: "Look, we've established that you are a nice guy."

"Thank you," Dan said, suspicious that this compliment came with strings.

"And that you go to great lengths to be a nice guy, to avoid unnecessary conflict—with your father, with your fans, with me," Abby held up her hand to silence the objection she could see coming, "What I want to know is, why are you willing to be an honest-but-not-so-nice guy around certain people? People like Rebecca. And Casey, for that matter?"

"Hey, how did I end up being not-so-nice in this scenario? I mean, I'm no angel, but on a niceness scale, I bet lots of people would rate me higher than Steve Sisco." Dan sounded like he couldn't quite decide if he should be angry or joking.

Abby decided that angry might be more useful here, so she nudged him in that direction. "Is it important to you that people rate you more highly than Steve Sisco?" she asked in her best therapy voice.

"Ah, for the love of…" Dan stood up, crumpling the sandwich wrapper into a ball to keep from losing his temper. They did this every week: _you want to be liked too much _vs. _what in the world is too much? _Abby had pretty much beat this horse to a bloody pulp, but it simply kept being reincarnated. "Look, I don't care about Steve Sisco." He enunciated very carefully, "I don't particularly care about people who like Steve Sisco; I would actually prefer that those people _not_ like me. Except Rebecca, obviously. But that is how low my opinion is where Steve Sisco's concerned. And the thing is, I don't really care who knows what I think about him. To hell with them; it's no secret." He chucked the balled-up paper at the trashcan, missed by a mile.

"Ditto with Lisa, I gather?" Abby added quietly.

"Lisa is…_Lisa_ is, is a totally different story. I mean, I heard about how Steve Sisco treated Rebecca, but I _know _how Lisa treated Casey and it was just—I mean, I don't, I just totally don't…" Dan had walked over to retrieve the paper ball, but once he had it in his hand, he didn't seem to remember what to do with it so he turned just stood there, turning it over in his fingers.

Abby resisted the urge to point out that Dan was the one who'd first linked Casey's ex-wife, Lisa, and with Rebecca's estranged husband, Steve. She wasn't going to finish his sentence for him, either, even though it was hard to watch people physically struggle to voice their thoughts. Especially people like Dan, who lived with words; for them, it was like being abandoned by their very last friend. But when it happened she knew they were getting somewhere.

"I don't approve," Dan managed to get out, the smiled wryly at how prim that sounded. "I don't _approve_ of the way these people, my friends, are being treated and I want that on the record, even if it's the, whaddaya call it, the minority opinion. I don't want them to be comfortable with it, or with me, 'cause I'm not comfortable with it. And someday, when they decide they're not comfortable with the relationship either, I want them to...to have that. To have the minority opinion so that they know there's at least one person who doesn't think they're crazy for leaving the famous prime-time husband or the little nuclear madonna-and-child!"

Dan looked so perfectly righteous at that moment that Abby seriously thought about leaving it there. It was true, that was how he felt, an d it was honorable. Just like his promise to support Rebecca was true and honorable. It wasn't the whole truth, of course, but what ever was? She could let him go with this; it was enough. They could while away the rest of the session on some trivial point, like why he always called Steve Sisco by his full name. After all, what was up with that?

At points like this, Abby always remembered the clinical truth that severely depressed patients generally commit suicide soon _after_ they're put on medication. Before that, they are literally too depressed to kill themselves: it's that dangerous initial period when they have the drug-induced energy without the stability that comes from a long course of medication and counseling. One of her professors had called the phenomenon 'the post-crash crash.' That's how Abby always thinks of this double-whammy technique, her trick of harnessing the confidence and disorientation that come from a breakthrough, especially a positive one, and using it to dig deeper, to draw blood. Suicide is a bad metaphor, of course. The true crash is destructive, but not totally devastating. Unless, of course, she miscalculated either the force of the blast or the stability of the structure. Still, the risk was worth it. The true crash levels everything, even the ruins, so you can see the whole foundation all at once and build something lasting.


	3. inferno

"To hell with them all," Abby announced, toasting Dan with her mug of tea.

"That's what I said," Dan affirmed. He slam-dunked the ball of sandwich wrappings and then walked back to snatch Abby's off the end table. He sat himself at her desk so he could smooth it out. From here he could set up a nice three-pointer.

"Except Rebecca, obviously."

Dan was puzzled for a second; he actually had some trouble remembering what he'd said in the heat of the moment. Thank goodness for Abby; she'd never let him forget a single detail. "Right. Hell would not agree with Rebecca. Although, you know, I'm told that it's a state of being and not an actual, like, geographical location…"

Abby shrugged, "I'm still partial to the Dantean model, myself."

Dan was now creating something complicated and origami-like out of the deli paper that had once held her sandwich. "Well," he conceded, "they say you never forget the one you meet in high school."

Abby raised her eyebrows, "I thought that's what they said about girls."

"Eh, girls, eternal torment, same difference. Of course, my high school bore some distinct similarities to hell, particularly the tenth grade English class in which I first read Dante, so my associations may be a little skewed."

"I take it that Casey would be spared, too?"

"Hmm?" While Dan had been trying to remember how to make a paper flower, they had somehow gotten into this conversation. He didn't mean to talk about high school at all. He'd actually been going to say what a good thing it was that Abby had gone for the sandwich without the mayonnaise. Otherwise the paper would have gotten all soggy.

"I mean, if Rebecca is exempt from the hell-bound Steve Sisco Fan Club, then I imagine Casey would be pardoned for the sin of loving Lisa?"

"Yeah."

Oh, that short answer again. Abby really wanted to see what Danny was doing with that paper—more specifically, she wanted to see if his hands were steady—but she decided to give him some space. "You know," she said idly, "I don't know quite how I feel about classifying love as a sin."

"It was good enough for Dante," Dan said quietly.

"Was it? Yeah, I guess so—Paolo and what's-her-name, stuck in the whirlwind forever. Only their sin wasn't actually love, was it?"

"Nah, it was…lust or something. Quite a hair-splitter, that Dante. You do know," Dan looked up from his work, not quite sure how to derail this joke and beginning to feel very much out of his depth, "that I'm not interested in sending anyone to hell, I mean, even if I could?"

"You mean, even if you had the power? Or even if it existed?"

"Either. Both." Dan said petulantly; he hated these dumb hypothetical conversations. He was sorry they'd even gotten into it. "I don't have that power—I wouldn't want it. And I don't think hell exists, anyway. Why should there be some mythical brimstone-y place where devils with pitchforks make us miserable when we manage to do a perfectly good job of it right here on Earth?"

"What is the Jewish version of hell? Anything like the obsession that I remember from my Catholic school days? Man, those nuns would just _not_ leave it _alone_." Abby went on, ignoring his last sentence for the red herring it was.

"Look, if you want to talk Torah, Jeremy's your man. I never paid all that much attention to it."

Abby noticed his strident tone, but didn't really believe it. Sure enough, when she looked over at him, Dan was staring at his little art project like a kid who hopes that he won't be called on if he just doesn't meet the teacher's eye. "I guess Hebrew school is not all that much like Sunday school, then. 'Cause there's arcane stuff from catechism class that I _still _remember. " When he didn't say anything, she continued, more gently. "You understand, Danny, that you _don't_ have that kind of power, right? It's not like you can jinx people into hell, no matter how upset you are. Nothing bad is going to happen if you talk about them here. There's not some personalized demon who is going to take particular notice of people you complain about and single them out for retribution."

"I _don't believe _in hell," Dan said fiercely.

"Okay."

For about thirty seconds, the only sound in the room was the rattling heating duct and the sound of Danny folding paper. When he spoke again, he sounded as thought he didn't quite trust his voice. "The, uh, the Midrash says that hell—Gehenna, it's called—was created on the second day. That's the bit in Genesis where the waters are separated into heaven and earth. And God does _not_ say that it is good. He doesn't say anything; it's just, boom, onto day three. Did you know that? Every other day in Genesis gets God's approval: the light, the seas, the animals, the whole nine yards. God sees them all, that they are good. But not the second day."

"I never noticed that," Abby said simply, willing to let this go where it went.

"Yeah, well, it's true. I mean, it's in the Torah, I don't know whether…anyway, the point is, on the second day, 'the waters are separated from the waters.' Something is split into separate parts and that break, that schism, that is hell. On the first day, it was light and dark, remember? And apparently those things are different enough that they can be separated with no hard feelings. They were never meant to be one thing. But the water is different, because it's one thing to begin with and then it's not any more, it's not whole, it's broken and the, uh, dissention is how hell enters the world."

Without looking at her, Dan began to arrange the items on her desktop, building a straight little barrier across the center. "That always got me, how the world is perfect for _just one day_. After that, it's ruined forever." He shifted her stapler a millimeter to the right. "I mean, it doesn't really make any sense 'cause it's only, you know, water. But then a little further on, you get Cain and Abel, and it's the same: they're two of the same thing, and not even God can love them equally, so one gets slighted, and he gets angry. In Hebrew, you know, the name Abel means 'nothingness'?"

Dan looked up at her, then, from where he'd been staring fixedly at the desktop, so Abby didn't say have to say anything, she could just shake her head. No, she hadn't known that, he hadn't really expected her to. He wanted her to divine what he wasn't saying, but she couldn't quite…she shook her head again.

"So Cain is jealous, literally, of nothing?" she asked.

"He's jealous…he's jealous of the nothing he can't have," Dan said, and this time she could definitely hear the tears in his throat.

Abby was flailing: she had gone too far from what she knew, she couldn't guess what was coming next. Religion had never even made it on to her radar screen where Dan was concerned. Of all the many, many areas in which he felt inadequate, religion had never seemed to crack the top twenty. His family hadn't been particularly devout; they celebrated the High Holidays, Passover for the kids, but it had never been a major thing. When he'd filled out the insurance paperwork for her office, he'd written "International Brotherhood of the Fallen Away" in the blank for religion. Abby had chalked it up as another manifestation of Danny's off-kilter humor. As an adult, his observances were kind of like his tastes in carry-out: all-encompassing and constantly changing, best if it was something exotic, something you couldn't make at home. He would celebrate occasionally with guys at work—Abby recalled them building a sukkah over the catering table last year. But he was just as likely to try red Easter eggs and one of Abby's celebrity-stalking clients claimed to have seen him standing in the back of St. John the Divine on Christmas Eve.

As a therapist, Abby had always been a little wary of matching real cases to archetypes: no one really thought of themselves or their clients as Oedipus or Elektra, right? That was just clinical shorthand. Unless you were someone who saw the world in terms of narratives. If you spent your days finding parallels across a range of sports, putting like with like to craft stories for public consumption, maybe you saw things differently. If you thought about the world as a series of stories, and if you believe that your story centered around the death of your brother, then maybe the character you identified with was the disenfranchised Biblical son who killed his younger and more-favored brother.

Dan propped his elbows on the desk and let his head drop into his hands. Abby watched his shoulders move with quick, unsteady gasps, but only when she got close did she see how tense he really was. He'd pulled his fingers into fists so tight that she thought the bones might burst through the taut skin along his knuckles. She knelt down on the other side of her desk, moving stuff out of the way. A pencil cup, a little calendar, paper clips in the dish her friend Bethany had made—Abby wanted to give Dan time to get used to her presence. He had once admitted to "some, uh, initial consonant problems, mostly with confusing 'sad' and 'mad'." She wanted to gauge where on the spectrum he was now.

Finally, Abby reached up to pull on hand away from his face. "Danny? Dan, let me see…move your hand…." He jumped when her hand closed on his wrist but let her coax one fist free: his face was blotched, red and pale, and he actually seemed to have bruised himself with the force of his fingers. She could tell from his eyes that all of the 'mad' generated by Steve Sisco had pretty much burnt out.

"What is it, Dan?" she asked quietly, "What is the nothing that you want so badly?" Abby tried to unclench his fist since he seemed incapable of relaxing on his own. It took real effort to pry apart his fingers and he just watched her like it was someone else's hand entirely. She smoothed out his right hand, then went to work on the left.

"I just, I, I—I don't understand, Abby." The bewilderment in his voice was about a million heartbreaking miles from the confident tones of the CSC Sports Night anchor he would have to be in four hours.

"What don't you understand?" Abby rested her chin on her hands and looked over at him; if she didn't keep prompting him, he would just shut down.

"It's…it was, he. He was so…" Dan couldn't breathe; he couldn't get air past the burning lump in his throat. He rubbed fiercely at his eyes, knotting his hands up again, undoing all of Abby's work. "He was just _crazy_ about her, Abby. I mean, like, high on her, not in his right mind. He wanted her to be happy more than he wanted his next _breath_."

"Who?"

"Casey," Dan said, surprised, like who else would they be talking about?

"And Lisa?"

"Yeah. I—I've never seen anything like it. And the thing is, the thing…" this part had always mystified Dan, "Why them? They're just…normal people. I mean, Casey's hardly Doctor Zhivago or anything. Nothing star-crossed. Nobody got swept off their feet. They met at the college newspaper: he wrote a sports column and she was the advertising editor."

"Not everyone is Romeo and Juliet, Dan. Or Zhivago. Or Paolo and Francesca, for that matter."

"But why how could they…?" Dan's eyes were pleading with Abby to explain this mystery of the universe, but his voice was hard. "Abby, she had it, Lisa had all that…love and loyalty, respect, just total devotion, Casey would have supported her in anything—and she _gave it up_."

"Oh…oh, Danny." Abby was speechless, for once. Dan who could never, ever have enough affection—who couldn't even conceive of such a thing—imagined that Lisa and Casey had burned through a lifetime supply. No wonder he was angry: it would be like a starving man watching a whole banquet thrown away. And no wonder that anger confused him, since Dan knew full well that Casey and Lisa's relationship had been pretty unhealthy.

Abby tried to formulate her next question carefully. She didn't want Dan going off the deep end, storming out in his current condition. Dan was an open-minded guy, but he worked in sports media, for crying out loud. He had his career to consider, had to avoid even the appearance of... "Danny. Look at me. Do you think…are you in love with Casey?"


	4. paradiso

Dan was stunned. For an instant he looked like someone had just set off a flashbulb in his face. Then he started to laugh. Abby thought it was the most broken sound she had ever heard. She wasn't surprise to see that he was kind of crying at the same time. By the time he'd caught his breath, he'd smeared tears all over his face. His nose was runny. Damn, Dan thought, I'm dissolving.

"I'm not…I, God, look, I love Case, Abby. I'd do anything in the world for him, but I'm not _in love_ with him," He could see that she didn't get the distinction. "It's like…Casey is _in love_ with Dana. He _was_ in love with Lisa. He just plain _loves_ Charlie. You, you _love_ Bethany," he shifted the little dish of paper clips. Abby remembered he'd spent a whole session asking about the items on her desk instead of talking about his freshman year at Dartmouth. "But you're not _in love_ with her. Understand?"

Abby understood. She believed him. She believed that he considered his feelings for Casey completely platonic. And she believed Dan had created a categorical hierarchy of love the way a non-native speaker might create a list of irregular verbs: to make the unfamiliar a little more comprehensible. "So, who are you _in love _with?"

"I'm—I can't…I don't think I do it right," Dan said simply, offering a shattered little smile. "I think that there's a division—maybe it's the second day, the separation of the waters." He shrugged. "I'm in the group that just…can't get it together where love is concerned." There were no tears now, just a calm matter-of-factness.

The logic clicked for Abby, at last. She wasn't guessing anymore; it was like she'd been shown a cosmology of the layers and levels of Dan's bruised mind. "So," she said slowly, "this is why people like Lisa and Steve Sisco are loved and you are not...even though they've proven that they don't appreciate the people in their lives? This is why Rebecca is bypassing you to practically throw herself at her husband? Why them and not you? Because you are incapable of being loved—sorry, of being in love? It's everybody else in one group, and you in the other?"

"They're…they're such _good _people, Abby," Dan said suddenly. "Rebecca and Casey, both, and they're just throwing it away. I can't stand how they're treated; I hate that they put up with it. When I would give anything to…It just—God, it _hurts _to watch them!"

"You're a good person, too, Danny."

He sighed. "Yeah, I—"

"Don't blow me off, here, Dan. Don't tell me that you know; just listen when I tell you that _I_ know. I know you're thoughtful and compassionate and generous. I know that you're cheerful and honest. You make your fans smile and you're a true comfort to your friends. If you don't believe me, ask them. Ask them tonight." Dan wouldn't look at her. Abby put her hands over his, to keep him from bolting, to make him focus on her words. "And I know that you have a huge capacity for love. You're a loveable person. You would be even if you were much less than the man you are. Love is not zero-sum: no matter how many Steves and Lisas there are gobbling it up, there will always be enough for you. So don't be afraid to ask for it."

Abby could feel Dan's hand start to tremble under her own but she didn't move her eyes from his face. "There is no division between who can be loved and who can't. Like you said: it's just water, all one thing. If a separation does exist, then we should do what God didn't: come right out and say it is _not good._"

He was looking at her like a charmed snake. Abby only hoped some of what she was saying would stick. "I think that's what you're here for, Danny. I think right now, one of the things you're meant to do is remind people of just how much they deserve to be loved, of how little credence they should give to those who don't respect that. And I think that's why people like Casey and Rebecca are so…lucky, lucky, _lucky_ to have you around to love and to love them. What do you think, Dan?"

Dan shook his head. His hands were nearly jumping off the table. "I, uhm, I think, Abby, I…have--" He choked and shot out of her office, heading for the restroom in the waiting area, knocking over the paper clips as he went. Abby sighed and stood up from the desk. _Lucky? 22 years of school and my whole psychiatric vocabulary just deserts me when I need it most. _Abby shook her head; she couldn't beat herself up about it. Casey and Rebecca _were_ lucky. She was pretty sure Dan had just lost whatever it was that Jack had let him smuggle out for his lunch. She bent over to pick up the paper clips. Maybe it was time to reconsider these dinner appointments.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…is anything broken?" Dan was back in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, looking pale and embarrassed with several scrubbed spots on his shirt.

"No, nothing broken; everything's fine. Right?"

"Uh, yeah. I—sorry. That. That hasn't happened in a long time. 'S what I get for eating on the run, huh?" Dan was a little cheered when Abby smiled back. He picked up his jacket, just to have something to fiddle with. "Anyway, thanks. For seeing me. I gotta get going. Let you get on with your evening. I didn't mean for it to take this long. You must be worn out, after all day, I mean, so I'll just…go."

"Yeah, long day," Abby said, "but I don't think I'll leave just yet. Come on, have a seat."

"Nah, really, I should clear out. My hour was up a while ago."

"Danny," Abby reached over and took the coat he was wringing out of his hands. It was a worn black duffle jacket and she could see a little name label inside, like the kind overprotective mothers sew in before their kids go off to college or summer camp. "Sit with me. Just for five minutes. We're not gonna talk. Just…sit."

So they sat down, Dan in an armchair, Abby on the sofa with the coat spread over her knees. Abby didn't say a word; she didn't even bother to tidy up her files. She'd do that tomorrow. Right now she would simply let this day drain out of her. Dan was right, she was worn out. But it was a good day, a good day's work. A solid start and enough catharsis to probably keep Dan on an even keel for a few more weeks. There would be other things to talk about, of course, like why the Casey/Lisa relationship had made such a powerful impression, whether he really believed that people were punished for not reciprocating love, how to carry on in the wake of Rebecca. And Sam, naturally: things always came back to Sam. Who was the Abel in that scenario, Abby wondered idly, who was the nothing son?

Dan cleared his throat and stood up. "Hey, Abby, really, I've got to head out."

Abby looked up at him. His color was back, his hands were steady, his breathing was normal. She could release him onto the streets of New York without defying the Hippocratic Oath. "Yeah," she said, "I guess you do."

"Who's David? On the label in your coat?" she asked as he wound his scarf around his neck.

He held the door open for her and waited in the hall while she locked up. "Oh, my brother—my older brother. It used to be his. I didn't have any warm stuff when I moved up from Texas, and he'd gone to grad school in New England, so he had nothing but winter gear. We held a little Rydell family swap meet."

"Mmmm…I remember now: David, the professor. How's he doing? You'll have to tell me more about him sometime. Next time, maybe." It wasn't really a question.

A shaky pause. Dan took a deep, testing breath. He wasn't going to scream, he wasn't going to start bawling. He actually felt…better. Clearer. Like he could briefly take his attention away from the job of not imploding and get on with other things.

"Yeah, ok." He said, "next time."

They didn't talk in the elevator. Abby remembered her appointment book just as the doors rolled open on the lobby of her building. For a second she seriously thought about leaving it, but no, she needed those phone numbers inside the front cover.

"Oh, damn..." She bit her tongue. Not professional to swear in front of clients. " I've got to run back up; my scheduling book is still sitting on my desk."

Dan raised his eyebrows and laughed at her guilty expression, "You really should get a secretary. D'you want me to…?"

"No, no, you go ahead; it'll just take me a minute, and you have a show to do!" She smiled and quashed the urge to tell him to take it easy tonight, to ask for what he needed. Television was his element; he'd be just fine. "Thank you for dinner."

"My God, dinner…such that it was! You're quite welcome." Dan put out his hand to keep the elevator doors from shutting. "Abby. Thank you for everything."

"You're quite welcome, Danny. Take care."

Abby didn't let the doors close until Dan had crossed the lobby and vanished toward the taxi stand. Then she took the elevator back up, mentally listing the pros and cons of hiring a secretary. The calendar, naturally, was right on her desk where she'd left it after her 4:00 appointment. Next to it was the origami flower that Danny had made out of the butcher's paper from her sandwich. Abby plucked it out of the surrounding file folders. Flimsy paper to begin with, and now it was crumpled and damp. Still, you could still tell it was meant to be a rose, even in its bedraggled state, even though Dan had given it too many petals. Before going home for the night, Abby pitched out a stack of old AAPP journal articles and made space for it on the shelf behind her desk.

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"And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think

That it only makes you crazy and in love with your shrink

But, oh, how I loved everybody else

When I finally got to talk so much about myself."


End file.
